Three Sonnets in Sequence

Fall Horoscope

(the meeting)

What twist conspired our meeting, ushered in

Magnetic hunger of the lip for lip,

Hand's reach to hand, blood's tremolo to thin

: Blue vein in cheek, mind's urgency to strip

Conceit from bone and find the marrow sweet;

What mechanism's gear and counterpoise

Sprung to its function in an instant's heat,

As eye confronted eye, ear heeded voice?

The year, the season, or the day, perhaps,

The rootward pull of sap, the tawny drift

Of leaves in spiral at the fall's relapse,

The hint of frost to come and bind and rift:

It does not matter what the reason was,

Considering how and when it came to pass.

Afternoon of the Damned

(the jealousy)

This petulance implicit in the flesh,

This eager contour native to the bone

Perils the plot, the sequence planned, the mesh

Of guile contrived to liquidate the bane;

Passionate frailty turns the hazard loose,

And strays the purpose, urges wildly on

The baited tiger in the vein, obtuse

With hate, with fury hurling logic down.

Recalled, refractory, the willful I

Mimics the motion of a sober rule;

Is placid, dutiful, with downcast eye

Like any hypocritic child at school:

Then breaks its pandemonium on the air,

That you are equally as false as fair!

Winter Solstice

(the parting)

I think that in another time and place

We might have loved, who briefly kiss and go

Our private journeys with a similar woe:

You wear a singular and stony face,

And I, to patience never quite resigned,

Cry malediction on the hour that brought

Two souls together with no loving thought,

And speech from no to yes not more than kind.

This frosty season when no leaf puts out,

No root fulfills its need, nor blossoms show,

(And tubers snug in gravel do not grow)

Defines the time when love endures its rout:

This wan desire connotes the wintry lag

When sparks no ember out of ash and slag.